The Denver Art Museum will present "Andrea Carlson: A Constant Sky," the first museum survey of mixed-media visual artist Andrea Carlson (b. 1979, descended from Grand Portage Ojibwe and European settlers). The exhibition, running from October 5, 2025, to February 16, 2026, features over 30 works on paper, three large-scale paintings shown together for the first time as the artist intended, and a monumental sculptural work titled "Columns for a Horizon." Carlson's art challenges colonial narratives by combining text and complex visual references to animals, art objects, and cultural belongings, creating prismatic landscapes that subvert American landscape genre painting.
This survey matters because it marks a significant institutional recognition of an Indigenous artist whose work critically reexamines museum collections and colonial storytelling. By drawing objects from museum collections into her own landscapes, Carlson refuses singular ownership and deconstructs how Indigenous narratives have been interpreted by others. The exhibition also highlights her recent expansion into sculpture, signaling an evolving practice that continues to push boundaries in contemporary art discourse around land, identity, and decolonization.